


so hold me tight (or don't)

by SashaSea (SHCombatalade)



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-09-29 12:43:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17203625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SHCombatalade/pseuds/SashaSea
Summary: It turns out that being in a fake relationship with someone for both four weeks and thirteen years takes up far more of Andrew’s time than he thought.All in all, pretending to date Neil Josten feels very much likeactuallydating him. Until it doesn’t.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [badacts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/badacts/gifts).



> happy birthday, ya dumb bitch

 “What?”

It’s not that he hasn’t heard her, because he has – he hears everything and remembers it instantly, keeps the often-overlooked minutiae of the world in his brain where it clutters away the unforgettable parts of a childhood desperate to be lost. He’s heard every word she’s said since the phone call a week ago when she left him a voicemail to tell him that his father was dead. (He’s heard every word she’s said after _your father_ , which he’d had to hear seven times before the words finally stuck, because of everything he’s heard throughout his entire life those words were never part of it.) It’s more that he wishes there’s some way he’s misheard, because—

Just because.

The lawyer smiles at him blandly, a polite, paid by the hour smile; she does not repeat herself. “I believe your father’s instructions were very clear.”

The words short-circuit his brain again like they have the other eight times now, and he barely hears the rest of it – _your father_ , he thinks again, still recognizing the meaning they’re meant to carry and the one sadly lacking, the one that should be sad or angry or anything at all beyond very, _very_ confused.

“Why thirty-four?” It’s the first thing Aaron has said since they landed, and the second thing he’s said since they got on the plane ten hours ago; they’d both received the same short phone message from an unknown lawyer, but Aaron had fixated on the _is dead_ aspect when Andrew cared only about the _your father_.

This time her smile is softer. Kinder. She smiles at Aaron like any other man who has lost a father, but mostly like one about to come into a very large sum as a result of it. “Your father’s will was notarized in 1999... It’s probably nothing more than a reasonable future estimate.”

“But why thirty- _four_?”

Andrew snarls the way he’s been dying too since they got there, wielding his words like a fist to keep him from _actually_ punching someone, and he pinches the skin of Aaron’s elbow viciously. “There’s two of us,” he reminds tersely, in case Aaron has somehow forgotten, “it’s sixty-eight. So this Mr. Tran has known about since the _nineties?_ ”

“Your father was very clear,” she corrects firmly, but otherwise says nothing – there’s only so many times the three of them can dance around the issue of a father who has died and left everything to the sons who never knew he existed before they all grow tired of it. “That the deadline applied to _both_ of you.” She means Andrew but speaks only to Aaron, raising her eyebrow and her voice like it’s some secret meant to be shared around its intended target. Like he’s somehow the conductor who can orchestrate it. “If one of you fails to meet it, neither of you receives anything.”

This time it’s Aaron who curls his lip in a sneer – here’s the true nature of the man revealed. A billionaire father who wrote more conditions for the sons he never bothered to contact receiving nothing at all than he did for them ever seeing a dime of it. A man with wealth and means who clearly knew of the children he fathered, but never once attempted to care for them. “This is bullshit,” he shuffles his coat off the back of his chair, “we don’t need—”

Andrew pinches the skin of his elbow again. “We’ll be in touch,” he promises, and he leads his brother out.

* * *

“What the fuck, Drew.” Contrary to that morning, the taxi ride between airport and office is far from silent – Aaron does not shut up for the entire forty-three minutes of it, despite the increasing frustration evident in every aspect of Andrew’s person. “You’ve been wanting to tell this guy to fuck off for thirty-three years and suddenly you’re playing nice with his lawyer? You _hate_ lawyers. You hate Mr. Tran. You—”

“Katelyn is pregnant.”

Aaron rolls his eyes around eight years of pediatric medicine and eight weeks of that exact knowledge. “No shit, Sherlock.” Katelyn has been pregnant for about fourteen weeks now, and Aaron was the one who broke that bit of news to Andrew as soon as they found out.

“Irony of ironies, it’s twins.”

It’s not. Katelyn has been pregnant for about fourteen weeks now and Aaron sees her every day, has been to every doctor’s appointment, and would absolutely know if it was. Except—

Just except.

“And how do you know that?”

Andrew shrugs, raising his shoulders so he doesn’t raise his voice – it’s not Aaron’s fault they’re an ocean away from familiar territory, jumping through hoops set up by the man who fathered them and then promptly forgot about them. Aaron is only his enemy when the rest of the world is not, and he bites his frustration into the inside of his cheek. “How the fuck do you think I know? She told me. The fuck, you think I’m _spying_ on you? Like I don’t have anything better to do with my time?”

Aaron is only his enemy when the world is not, but Andrew is always Aaron’s. “Why would she tell you and not tell me? When do you two even talk to each other?”

It’s true. Katelyn and Aaron have been together since college and married since soon after, but she and Andrew have never been close. They tolerate the other merely for ease of the man they timeshare, and for an annual holiday photo. “You were at work when she found out, and she needed someone to freak out to before you got home. I was the only one in the time zone.” It’s all very matter of fact – Andrew is used to being a last resort.

It’s been a long, _long_ week of fathers and their sons, and Aaron slumps against the seat; he looks older now that he’s stopped dying his hair blond, the beginnings of grey streaking through the dark hair at his temples, and he looks even older with exhaustion etched into the darkness under his eyes. “I don’t really want anything to do with Mr. Tran’s bullshit conditions,” he admits quietly, and Andrew feels his lips curl into a matching smile.

“His whole deal is bullshit,” he agrees, “but the money is pretty nice.”

Nice is a very mild way of describing the three hundred and eighty-three million dollars – _each_ , the lawyer had stressed, like that was somehow less boggling to two boys raised as far below the poverty line as they had been – they’re both in line to get, and Aaron snorts. “Fuck Mr. Tran, and fuck his money. Do you know how much doctors make?”

He does. “About 300% less a year than they owe in student loans,” he recites, because the research had been a good distraction from the trans-Atlantic flight and the eight hours of panic that bubbled in his chest. “Times two sets of loans, plus whatever twins cost nowadays.”

Aaron looks older with the dark stubble that he hasn’t had time to shave, and the dark shadows of reality setting in behind his eyes. “So what are we going to do? That deal of his—”

Andrew grins, and grimaces. “I’ll handle it.”

* * *

Twelve hours later he drops to the couch beside his best friend and, without explanation or preamble, hands her an application for a marriage license. “I need a second signature on this,” he answers her unasked question, and tucks his socked feet beneath her legs.

Renee reaches over with her left hand to brush his hair away from his forehead and allows the light to catch in the over-sized diamond on her finger. “It’s about two weeks to late for us,” she reminds him fondly.

He snorts. “And two decades too gay. I wasn’t asking you.” There’s an entire season of _The Walking Dead_ in his DVR that they were saving for after the wedding that ate up so much of their free time (and if Andrew had never wanted to get married before it was even worse now, seeing exactly how crazy it made the usually steady Renee. She’d had a wedding planner and a fiancée that carried the majority of the weight between them but had still ended up spending more than a few nights in his living room ranting about flowers or guest lists or anything else it was apparently his job to care about as her Maid of Honor.) but instead he switches the television off and curls around one of the throw pillows. “Aaron and I found our biological father,” he tells her quietly. The hand in his hair moves to cup his cheek, then his chin, and Renee catches her breath with a soft noise. “He’s dead, but apparently he left us about seven hundred and seventy million dollars.”

“Oh my god.”

“Provided that we’re both married by November.”

“ _Oh my god_.”

If he pretends very, _very_ hard, he can hear a trace of sympathy hiding beneath the laughter in her voice. Renee has been his closest friend since they were in college, two broken souls in an intro psych course together, and she knows him well enough to know how little he cares for the idea of a father, or of a fortune – barely at all, and even less than he cares for the idea of a relationship of any kind. It’s the universe’s eternal cosmic joke, combining the three like this, and she doesn’t bother to hide how much she enjoys it. “Yeah, I know. But Aaron needs the money, and he gets nothing unless—”

He can’t even say it. Instead, he waves the paper and its single name in emphasis.

Renee slides her fingers between his and squeezes in support. “Well,” despite the undercurrent of amusement there’s a focus in her voice that he appreciates. A large part of their relationship might have been forged in ridiculous hypotheticals that could never come to pass, but she always took the time to consider them in full detail. This one, although real, is no less fanciful, and she treats it with appropriate gravitas. “You could always—”

“If the next words out of your mouth are anything relating to actually meeting someone and considering marrying them for real,” the way he leans into her belies the fury in his voice, “I will kill you.” She hums a soft, agreeing sort of noise. “Literally. I will kill you in your sleep.”

“Sure you will, Rob.” She tweaks his ear as she stretches, slowly gathering herself to head home for the night. It’s not far – she met her wife when the upstairs apartment flooded and the stunning blonde had come downstairs to apologize, and moved in only a few months later. It’s the matter of an elevator ride (and once, a very drunken feat of gymnastics involving the fire escapes) between the two. “Love you too.”

* * *

The next morning, he calls his second-best best friend on the phone and relays the same story. It doesn’t sound any less farfetched during the light of day.

“This is perfect!” Kevin sounds as close to giddy as he gets, the same way he sounds in the post-game interviews after his team wins. Like a victory.

It’s not a surprise that Kevin isn’t really listening when nothing Andrew ever says relates back to exy; he’s used to it, after this many years, but in times like these he regrets every forming a friendship with someone this obsessed with sports. It hadn’t been his intention, all those years ago, and half the time he hoped the distance between them and the difference in interests would help it end naturally, but it turned out that loyalty was the other thing Kevin was disgustingly good at, and here they were. “This is a clusterfuck,” he fires back, a headache already forming behind his sinuses.

“No, Andrew, listen.” He is – it’s what he does. Kevin talks and Andrew listens, and often doesn’t care, and sometimes they’re in the same city and the intimacy of face to face reminds Kevin that it’s his turn to listen sometimes too. _Sometimes_. “There’s this kid on the team – _great_ striker, and more than halfway decent on defense. Problem is, he’s a complete asshole.” By most standards, so is Kevin. By Kevin’s standards, so is Andrew. That sets an unsettling precedent to exactly what sort of person this kid is somewhere around the level of a natural disaster, and Andrew already hates where this is going.

“No.”

“He’s facing a three-game suspension unless he can rein it in, and Coach thinks softening his image will earn enough public support to fight it down to a fine. There’s only one game left in the regular season and,” he pauses here, just enough for Andrew to unclench his jaw and take a swig of the alcohol he’d poured before dialing – it was alcohol completely necessary to listening to anything about exy. “We really can’t afford to lose him.”

The headache surges to something between a migraine and what he imagines a lobotomy feels like, like having his skull pulled apart. “I really cannot express how few fucks I give about that.”

Andrew cares about exy about as much as he cares about marriage, or Mr. Tran, or his millions – he doesn’t, but somehow he’s caught up in anyway. He’s the unlikeliest of choices to have befriended the sport’s superstar, except that Andrew had met Kevin as nothing more than an abused boy with a broken hand who happened to be the son of Andrew’s academic advisor. At the time Andrew’s counselor had been urging him to get a pet, anything to care for that might teach him empathy – he’d taken in an entirely different sort of stray, and didn’t learn a thing about empathy but a whole lot about exy, and between the five of them (Aaron and Nicky and Erik and David) they slowly put together whatever pieces the Ravens had left. He’d never expected a few years of therapy would have Kevin back at the top, or that he would never forget the boy who got him there.

Kevin ignores him, like he usually does. “This is _perfect_ ,” he says again, like maybe Andrew will agree this time. “He gets the good press, you get the money, and we get the championship.”

“I still do not care about that. At all.”

Kevin might be stupid for exy but he’s not stupid, not at all. It takes all of a blink for Andrew to remember that – a blink and the survivor’s steel in Kevin’s voice. “You wouldn’t have told me about this if you didn’t want my help. Don’t be a bitch just because you don’t like my solution.” The truth of it has Andrew swallowing his words and a double gulp of whiskey, and Kevin knows he’s won when no further arguing emerges. “He already agreed. You’re having dinner on Thursday.”

More than any of it, Andrew hates the loss of control. “Fuck you.”

* * *

If Kevin had told Andrew that it was Neil Josten who needed his help he would have robbed a bank rather than reluctantly agree to this charade – he might not care about exy but he knows an awful lot, and he definitely knows who Neil fucking Josten is.

“So I’m in,” he assures after a truly awkward introduction where he hadn’t even managed eye contact before Andrew was snarling out _of course it’s you_ and _no amount is fucking worth this_ before not speaking another word, like maybe Andrew worries his reputation as a first-class douchebag means he might back out of this deal. Like his only complaint is that he’s now somehow stuck with the Anthems’ unofficial enforcer and not the fact that his only complaint lies with who Neil is as a person. Like maybe, quite probably, he isn’t aware of how fucking obnoxious he is. “But if we’re going to pull this off we should get our story straight. What do you do?”

Andrew pinches the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses, trying to stave off the headache he’s felt forming since Kevin first answered his call. “I work for the FBI.”

Neil frowns around the straw in his sparkling water and shakes his head quickly; it makes the mess of curls usually hidden beneath a helmet or slicked back against his skull in interviews flop around his eyes, and Andrew absolutely hates it. “That’s not going to work, I hate the FBI.”

It’s so casual, the way he says it – it’s obvious from the fact that he’s still alive and allowed to play that Neil is used to getting his way, either from the charm he’s capable of (Andrew is still wondering where he’d dredged up the humanity to chat with the waitress like he had, or the young fan who recognized him through the window) or just from the world giving in to his complete determination to being intolerable, but Andrew wouldn’t consider changing his career path for a _real_ spouse, let alone one he’s essentially hired. “Great, I’ll just quit my fucking job because my pretend boyfriend doesn’t like it. Get the fuck over it.”

That drops the frown and at least fifty percent of the smugness from Neil’s face, and suddenly he looks like a very confused, very young man who is very out of his element. “Oh, you were being serious.”

“You thought I was—” It’s easier to talk to him, now that he seems less like he’s performing for yet another post-victory interview. Now that he’s human, soft and slow. “Why would I make that up?”

“I dunno,” Soft and slow and a little bit surly, biting his embarrassment into the plastic straw.

It hits him then, completely obvious, and he’s not sure if he wants to leave right then or just laugh for a while. “You thought I was trying to _impress you_?”

The dusky skin beneath his patchwork of scars and summertime freckles turns a quiet shade of rose, and the furrows of a scowl etch deeper into his forehead; in that exact moment Andrew hates him both less and more than he has the entire day. “I dunno,” he sounds like he’s looking for a fight, or like maybe he’s found one. “Maybe.”

Andrew _laughs_. The sound catches them both by surprise – Neil because he probably wasn’t sure it was a thing Andrew did, or maybe was capable of doing, and Andrew because he’d rather forgotten the same. “You already told me you were a sure thing, Josten.” He reaches for his drink with the pressure in his temples loosening, soothed by the sudden upper hand. “I don’t need to impress you.”

The responding smile is shy, like maybe Neil is realizing he doesn’t either. “Alright,” and it’s completely disgusting, the way he chews his words into the cracked plastic that used to be a straw; it’s the first sign that they might actually be able to pull this off, the messy imperfections of it all. “So tell me, Agent.” _Analyst_ , Andrew almost wants to correct, except that normally leads to people asking exactly what that means he does and he doesn’t have the energy to give any real part of himself to this. “How’d we meet? Through Kevin? Through work? Mine, not yours,” he amends quickly.

The potential for a smooth future snarls beneath the words, and Andrew doesn’t allow himself to frown but he definitely glares a little. “Exy and I don’t get along well,” he admits hesitantly; it’s not a usual thing, talking to a professional player that hasn’t spent a good portion of his teens drunk on his bedroom floor, and there’s a very good reason for that. “In fact, pretty sure the entire community – you included – hates me.”

Neil ignores the straw in favor of cocking his head, looking very much like some form of spaniel, and then grins the same sharp, shark-like grin from the magazine photos. “You’re _him_.”

He is. “I am.”

The façade he hadn’t realized Neil still wore drops in an instant as his entire face crinkles into laughter – he’s absolutely giddy with the information. “Holy shit,” he manages around a hoarse, barking laugh that does nothing to deter Andrew from his previous comparison. “This is even better than Kevin told me.”

It’s different, dangerous ground. Andrew hadn’t been looking forward to being punched in the face by yet another of Riko’s small surviving fanbase, but he _had_ been prepared for it. “Most people with your obsessive tendencies are not this excited to meet me.”

“Andrew,” and it shouldn’t feel important, the way it’s the first time Neil has used his name, “the only reason I’m able to play is because you put Riko and his entire network in prison. You gave me my _life_.”

He groans. “God, you’re annoying.”

“No, you don’t—” He squints his eyes a little, like he’s struggling to see something very far away. Like he’s trying to impress just a little bit of importance on his words. “I don’t mean exy. Well,” and there’s the too-loose half smile he’d flashed at the waitress, “I don’t _just_ mean exy. You literally gave me my life back.” He gestures one-handed to the mass of scar tissue on the left side of his face. “This used to be a four.”

“Oh,” Andrew responds, because he doesn’t know how else to, and then “ ** _oh_** ” when he realizes everything that comes along with that knowledge.

Neil Josten, who used to be Nathaniel Wesninski, grins ruefully. “Yeah, so pretty much not gonna hate you for that.”

Andrew rests his chin on one hand, considering. “Well, unless you want the rest of the world to know _why_ , you should probably pretend that you do.”

“Hmm,” Neil agrees quietly. It’s very clear from the fact that the rest of the world _doesn’t_ know what happened to the last surviving member of Riko’s Perfect Court that he doesn’t want them to, which means there’s yet another snag in their hastily woven together plan. “Maybe,” he starts, and then stops. Andrew raises an eyebrow like a question mark and Neil ducks his head back to worry the straw in his drink. “Maybe it wouldn’t matter, if we knew each other before all that.”

This time Andrew’s laugh is anything but delighted. “That was twelve years ago.”

“So we’ve been dating for thirteen,” Neil counters. “I started at Palmetto that year, it’s somewhat believable.”

It’s Andrew’s turn to blink owlishly, to tilt his head as if the new angle will give him any new perspective. “You did?”

Neil shrugs. “Yeah. I was on the team for five seasons, played with Kevin for three. Just in case anyone wants to fact-check us.” There’s a little something defensive in his voice, and a lot in his posture. “Majored in math.”

It’s crazy, all of it, but no more so than the contract that got them here. “Thirteen years?” Andrew asks again to confirm. He thinks it’s fitting, how unlucky it is. “And we’re not married yet?”

The sharp, shark-like grin rises like a challenge. “So put a ring on it, Minyard.”

* * *

Renee and Allison come over to watch the press release – it’s not anything formal, just the team’s response to the impending decision on whether or not Neil can play, but Allison had cackled when Andrew mumbled out an explanation over breakfast that morning and refused to miss it. “You realize,” Renee tells him in that stern, quietly disapproving way of hers, “that absolutely no one is going to fall for any of this.”

On screen Neil, dressed in a collared shirt and soft sweater and hair for once free of the gels he normally uses to fall in soft boyish curls across his forehead, rubs a hand ruefully against the back of his neck. “And I just want to apologize for being such an asshole,” he even sounds soft and young, a total shift from any other public appearance. “Well, _more_ of an asshole.” A few of the reporters, and most of his gathered teammates, laugh. “I know it’s no excuse, but there’s just been a lot going on recently. The stress of the post season, and then my partner’s dad just died about two weeks ago and—”

Hands shoot up, and then quietly slink down. The coach waves at one impatiently. “I’m sorry, your… partner? As in?”

Neil grins his sheepish, shy grin. “Well, we’re in our thirties. It seems stupid to keep calling him my boyfriend. Anyway—”

Every hand shoots up again, like a rocket, and the coach waves at another. “Did you just…” A less than quiet conference between a few members of the press, and then a different voice continues. “Did you just come out?”

Both Neil and Kevin lean together to share a casual, careless laugh that sounds exactly like an old joke between them, like something insignificant. Even the coach rolls his eyes fondly, and not a single member of the team does anything beyond smiling a little bit. “It’s been _thirteen years_ ,” Neil says with the same easy confidence, while Kevin claps his shoulder with feigned congratulations. “I didn’t realize we were _in_.”

The sea of reporters fall into stunned silence before shifting the focus back to the impending post-season, but with the half-hearted enthusiasm of an entire room too busy questioning their job security – no one wants to be the first to admit they had no idea, not about something that the entire team is treating as a known fact. Not about something potentially so huge that no one wants to admit to having missed.

Allison stops cackling, and Renee sounds reluctantly impressed. “Not only is the entire world going to fall for this,” she tells an equally stunned Andrew, “but even I believe it a little.”

He doesn’t laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, me too.”

* * *

Neil is fined $5000 by the league for unsportsmanlike conduct, but doesn’t miss a minute of play.

“They’re afraid if they do anything worse I might claim discrimination,” he says smugly; Andrew isn’t sure exactly how this happened, the post decision FaceTime, but it’s happening and it’s just as annoying as he thought it would be.

“Trust me,” he tells the grinning, unbearable face filling his screen. “No one in the league thinks you’re smart enough to know what that is.”

* * *

That night, the lawyer leaves a voicemail reminding Andrew that he has three months to meet Mr. Tran’s requirements.


	2. Chapter 2

The first game of the post season, Andrew reluctantly allows himself to be photographed in his courtside seats; he’s wearing Neil’s old jersey from college, which he had complained his way into accepting (and only then under a reminder of the staggering amount of money waiting on the other side of this act), and squished between Allison and Renee. Renee, who apparently _did_ remember Neil from college – “My roommate’s boyfriend was on the team,” she said when they got to the court, decked head to toe in Fox orange, and Andrew had scowled because aside from that first year, _he_ had been Renee’s roommate. He remembers Dan in the same vague way he remembers his own freshman roommate: both too much, and not at all. – seems most excited to be there. Allison follows, if only to see her wife so happy. And Andrew—

It’s the first exy match he’s watched since college – since the entire thing with Kevin and Jean and Riko – and he hates it just as much as he remembered. Still, it’s easy enough to blame the scowl on his face as a reaction to the Anthems being down by three at the end of the first half.

Neil taps his racquet against the plexiglass before heading into the locker room, grinning his lopsided grin and waving his arm in emphatic greeting; he mouths what Andrew refuses to accept is a wry _nice shirt_ at him, and then turns his attention to Renee. Recognition dawns quickly and probably only due to the sunburst of colors in her hair, the same rainbow she’s kept since high school, and he holds four fingers up to her. She nods, smiling, and his hand changes to a thumbs up before he all but trips over his own feet to rejoin his teammates.

The boyish, spaniel-like young man is such a stark contrast to the brutal force of nature who had cut down an opposing dealer only minutes before that Andrew is momentarily speechless.

“I hate this sport,” he yells to be heard over the roaring stadium, “and I hate that man.”

* * *

Andrew FaceTimes Neil after the game, ostensibly to check in. Neil had taken a nasty hit during the second half that hadn’t taken him out of the game, but had definitely banged him up a little. Instead, he quickly manages an impassive “yeah, I’m fine” before launching into a complete breakdown of the entire game, from the perspective of both teams.

Andrew still hates it, but he listens – it’s what he does.

* * *

It shouldn’t have taken as long as it does – he blames a combination of work, and wives – but Aaron calls him four weeks in to their feigned relationship. Unlike normal calls between the brothers, that were never anything close to normal but had, at least, become some measure of predictable over the years, Aaron is the one to wait silently on the line. “What the _fuck_ , Drew,” he finally manages, but it sounds more like he’s laughing than like he considers Andrew his enemy.

“Shut the fuck up,” Andrew absolutely does not laugh in return. It’s all too easy to forget why he’s doing this, when he and his brother are so casually at each other’s throats all the time, but there’s too many years of a Before they do not speak of that are burned like a reminder in his brain. They might not always, or often, get along, but there’s no end of the earth they wouldn’t travel to for the other. “It’s for three hundred million dollars.”

The line goes suspiciously quiet again, devoid even of breathing; Aaron is holding his breath, until he isn’t. “Yeah,” he says slowly. Too slowly. Andrew is the one more cautious with his words, the counterbalance to Aaron’s rapid-fire speech (though Andrew is the one who more talks with his hands). “The money is definitely the only perk you’ve found in the pretty redhead with the foul mouth.”

If Aaron were Renee, or maybe even Kevin (sometimes even Andrew forgets exactly how much he depends on Kevin), Andrew would probably snarl a rebuttal or squeak his rage. But Aaron is not Renee, or even Kevin – Aaron is not his friend and he is sometimes his enemy, and more than that he is Andrew’s younger brother by an entire nine and a half minutes. “If you like him so much,” he manages haughtily, “then why don’t _you_ marry him.”

Aaron does laugh at that, bright and open. “For three hundred million dollars, I might.”

* * *

It turns out that being in a fake relationship with someone for both four weeks and thirteen years takes up far more of Andrew’s time than he thought. There are games, and maybe he doesn’t have to go to them all or watch them on the televisions at work, but he has to google the scores to see who won. There’s at least three lunches, two with Kevin dragged along as some form of middle ground, and the third with Renee there as buffer, that he would otherwise work through or spend alone at home. There’s an entire afternoon spent dropping oily flakes of tuna all over the carpets of Neil’s apartment in order for his two cats, the unfortunately named King Fluffikins and the even more unfortunately named Sir Fat Cat (McCatterson, Neil added with a completely straight face, and Andrew had made him repeat it seven times while desperately praying that he’d misheard), to take just enough of a liking to Andrew for a few photos added to social media later.

All in all, pretending to date Neil Josten feels very much like _actually_ dating him. Until it doesn’t.

Before one lunch Neil moves close, probably for a hug if the click of cameras behind them mean anything, and Andrew flinches with his whole body in a way he hasn’t in years – it’s the loss of control he hates more than any of it. There’s a split second of time where he finds very blue, very intelligent eyes locked on his, and then Neil leans forward and down at just the right angle to look like they’re doing a bit more than just hugging from the photographer’s viewpoint, all while keeping a good six inches from actual contact. “I don’t like to be touched,” Andrew says later, because it’s easier to say that he hates being touched at all rather than that he hates to be touched by people he doesn’t trust (by people who are not Renee, and sometimes Kevin, and strangely Aaron).

Neil only nods, and shrugs, and smiles his lopsided smile. “So we’re private people,” he says as he orders a sparkling water to drink. Andrew hates that he’s already moved a straw closer to his reach, simply because he knows what’s coming. “It makes sense, given that we kept our relationship secret for over a decade.”

Immediately after the loss of control, the thing Andrew hates most is the way Neil says _our relationship_ like it’s not causing him an ulcer just to go along with it. Andrew is not used to making concessions to other people, either with his time or his temperament, and for all that he knows Neil is obnoxious for getting his own way he knows that he’s even worse about it – he has never once bent on any part of this, and he hates that Neil is so _agreeable_ about it all. He’s much more tolerable when he’s being an asshole about everything. “I also don’t like exy.”

The wrapper from the straw comes whizzing through the air and hits him solidly in the nose, and Neil grins around his makeshift blow-dart. “Great,” he grins at Andrew’s abject fury, “I’ll just quit my job because my pretend fiancé hates it.”

Andrew takes back everything he’s thought about Neil being tolerable.

* * *

When he can’t put it off any longer, Andrew allows Neil to meet Renee. She’d been inviting them both to dinner from the very moment the press conference changed her mind on whether this whole charade would work, mostly because she’d been so convinced that it would that she’d told Andrew he may as well start bringing Neil around since it seemed like he was going to be – a _fixture_ , she’d said with a smile, like the time she’d talked him through a panic attack over installing a new showerhead because it meant drilling into the wall, which meant _permanent_. He’d kept them apart as long as he could, partly because Renee was the only one who made him feel truly like himself, and mostly because he knew Neil and Allison would get along far too well.

They do.

It turns out that maybe Allison hadn’t just been dragged along to the game out of love and spousal devotion, because the first thing she does after cackling that Neil is much, _much_ shorter than he looks on television is joyfully rip apart his play for the last three seasons. She’s as ruthless with her critique as she is with the rest of her passions, and by the time she’s winding down Neil is looking a little bit starry eyed and Renee is looking a lit bit like she regrets her life. “She likes exy,” she tells Andrew in a belated, blatantly unneeded explanation.

“She can have him,” Andrew whines, and lets Renee pat him softly on the head in sympathy.

It takes three hours to drag Allison and Neil apart, and when they finally manage it the two have already exchanged phone numbers and a few plans to meet for lunch. “Goodbye friend!” Allison calls as Andrew physically manhandles Neil into the elevator by his elbows. “Goodbye friend-in-law!”

Andrew grins at her, a feral, threatening grin. “I will literally poison your apartment through the air vents.”

“Love you too, Rob!” Renee calls just as the door dings closed and starts its shuddering ride down to the lobby.

Neil leans against the wall of the elevator, rocked back on his heels, and looks at Andrew like he has far more questions than he’s willing to ask. Instead, he allows only one. “Why do they call you ‘Rob?’”

The memory of laughter dies in his throat, and suddenly Andrew is reminded that this is a man he has known for six weeks, not thirteen years, and that their only common tie is a single friend and an incoming fortune. “They don’t,” he mutters, knowing how childish it makes him sound. “Only Renee does.”

Instead of calling him out on acting like a brat, Neil only accepts it. “Like Batman and Robin?” he nods his head to Andrew’s phone case, which most of the time is too faded to be discernible, but he’s come to learn that Neil is very, _very_ observant.

“Like shut the fuck up,” he snarls instead, because he hates a little bit how he’s come to learn anything at all.

* * *

Exactly eight weeks into their pretend relationship, Andrew and Neil go on a date. Or, rather, they go out to dinner and they don’t invite their friends, and they both pretend very hard that it’s not the first time this has happened.

“So,” Neil opens his mouth, and Andrew already has a headache.

“If you talk about work,” he says in a pleasant voice around a somewhat pleasant smile, because there have been at least four sets of eyes trained on them since they walked through the door, “I will kill you and they will never find the body.”

Neil laughs like he’s just said something very funny, and Andrew retaliates by taking a slow, careless sip of the red wine he’d ordered solely because Neil had told him how much he hated the smell of it. “Better men than you have tried and failed,” he quips, but he winks when he says it and he doesn’t put a straw in his ridiculously overpriced sparkling water, and he doesn’t talk about work. Instead he talks about math, and about politics, and about history and mythology and a few cities in Europe he lived in when he was younger.

It turns out that he’s even more unbearable than ever when he’s not talking about work, because it’s very easy to drown out how clever he is when he’s being clever about something as stupid as _exy_.

They’re arguing over whether or not there is other life in the Milky Way before they’ve even considered ordering dessert, and Andrew has laughed four times and nearly knocked over a glass with how forcefully he’s gesturing, when he accidentally reveals that he minored in physics. “Really?” Neil asks in that shy, soft way he sometimes gets, when he’s not being a total asshole about everything.

Andrew shrugs. “I like space,” is the easiest way to explain it without giving any more of himself away, because he might be comfortable ranting about the design of fictional spaceships to Renee or to Kevin (or to Aaron and Nicky, but only on holidays) or charting constellations in every pattern of dots he can find (and he will _never_ feel comfortable admitting how completely fitting he’d found Perseus laid out against Neil’s fading freckles, with Algol in the birthmark at the edge of his nose), but Neil is none of them and Andrew doesn’t feel like he owes him any part of it.

“So you like space,” Neil’s smile does not waver, “and you like Batman, and apparently my cats. And you hate exy and having people touch you.”

“And _you_ ,” Andrew’s anger is incandescent, burning like the stars he knows so well. “I also hate you.” He doesn’t, and he does. He hates feeling like he’s losing control of his life and feeling like he has to give pieces of himself away to strangers and like he’s finally remember how to feel anything at all, and mostly how easily he’s done all of it.

There are far more than only four pairs of eyes watching them after Neil throws his head back and laughs.

* * *

He didn’t expect to be with Neil when the news finally got to any circle of Nicky’s in Germany; he didn’t really expect to ever be with Neil at all, any more than he had to be at any rate. But it just happens that he’s over at Neil’s apartment to continue to try and win over the cats when Nicky finally hears about everything, and then there is a very loud phone call that’s more in German than English as he tries to fit an explanation around Nicky’s excited tidal wave of words.

“It’s not—” He starts, only to get caught up by very vivid descriptions of Neil’s playing stats and exactly what shade of blue his eyes might be. He can hear Erik in the background urging Nicky to leave it alone, to leave _him_ alone, and it feels very much like Andrew is fourteen all over again and trying to explain without explaining why no, it _really_ doesn’t bother him that his cousin is gay; Erik had always been the perceptive one, had always understood Andrew a little better than he’d cared to think about, and it had taken a single glance at the angry young boy on the living room sofa for him to turn on Nicky to drop it entirely. Andrew does not hate Erik, but he hates how grateful he is for him. “We aren’t—”

Nicky finally shuts up only because Neil pops his head into view and grins his sharp, shark-like grin around his completely fluent German. “There’s money involved. It’s like I’m a prostitute only instead of paying me for sex he’s paying me to suffer.” And, well, at least he’s aware.

That might get Nicky to fall quiet but it has Erik laughing until he’s in tears, and Andrew doesn’t even bother giving him the satisfaction of hanging up on them; he just shoves his phone and Neil and growls “he’s _your_ problem now” without ever specifying which one he means, and he stalks off to the other room.

* * *

Neil dresses the cats up as Batman and Robin for Halloween, and he tags Andrew in the photo.

Andrew hates it so ferociously that he is twenty-three minutes late for work.

* * *

On the first of November, Andrew realizes exactly how terrible of a decision all of this has been.

“I can’t marry him,” he tells Renee over the phone, and also through the wood of her front door in the few seconds of panic it took between him knocking and her answering; he tosses his keys to Allison on her way out, carrying her pillow and her favorite hoodie, as she goes downstairs for another few hours of sleep. She salutes him with a middle finger and a quick reminder that it is _three in the goddamn morning_ , and he apologizes as best he can by having already made up the spare bed with the sheets she likes. He hasn’t slept in over forty hours and the shadows under his eyes have shadows of their own, and Renee tugs him down to the couch.

“Robbie,” she tries to get his attention, tugging his hands free of where he’s picked his cuticles raw from panic, and then “Andrew” when he doesn’t listen. She hasn’t called him by his real name in over eight years, and it snaps him into focus just long enough for her to grab his face and turn it to hers. “Hey.”

“I can’t marry him,” he repeats.

She pets his hair down from the wild, angry mess he’s torn it into, smooths the deep canyons he’s worn into his brow, takes off his glasses for him and folds them neatly onto the coffee table, and tries to assemble the pieces of him that are dangerously close to breaking off. “Talk to me,” she says in her soft, steely way that, even at his worst, he couldn’t help obeying.

“If I do this,” he tells her collarbones because he can’t meet her eyes, “then his cats are going to have to stay with me when he’s away during the season. I’m going to have to keep up with sports, and maybe even go to a game or two. When Nicky and Erik come for a holiday they’re going to have to buy him a present, and when you and Allison adopt a gremlin or five they’re going to have to meet him, and when the twins are born _they’re going to grow up knowing him_.” It terrifies him sometimes, how large the group of people he’s protecting has grown. “If I do this, I’m asking them all to make family out of a man who’s only here for a stupid game.”

She knows how much he hates being hugged but she does it anyway, pressing him against her and squeezing him like she can keep him together if she just holds him a little bit tighter; he sags against her chest like maybe he’d let her. “He’s not just doing this for a game.”

Andrew’s response is a tired, muffled snort. “He’s also doing it for a fuck ton of cash. I mean, I know _I’m_ only doing this for the money—”

“You’re not,” she scolds him, but holds him tighter all the same. “It’s never been about the money.” It’s always been about Aaron, and Katelyn, and the still unnamed pair to come, and maybe a little bit about Andrew himself. “You asked us to help you help Aaron and Katelyn, and we were glad to. You never asked us to welcome Neil into our lives, or even to like him... but we do.”

“I know we do,” he admits. Quietly, too quietly, where she can barely hear him. “That’s sort of the problem.”

* * *

On the third of November, Andrew lets himself into Neil’s apartment with the key he’s somehow acquired and allows the cats he’s somehow become fond of to wind around his ankles.

“I can’t marry you.”

Neil stares at him from across the kitchen counter, eyes very blue and curls very messy from sleep, and doesn’t say anything for a very long time. He tilts his head, considering, and seems nothing of the sarcastic, sharp-edged athlete or the clumsy, quick-to-smile man; for the very first time Andrew feels like he’s sharing space with a real person, with whatever truth has built itself around multiple backgrounds of lies. His face is completely blank as he shrugs. “Okay,” he agrees easily, and Andrew knows enough of what Neil sounds like when he’s lying to know that he’s _not_. “So don’t.”

Just as Neil treated their pretend relationship as something easy to swallow, he treats the ending of it the same; Andrew is suddenly furious about how completely accommodating Neil has been, of everything, of every one of Andrew’s odd rules or quirks or instructions. “Okay?” he asks like he hasn’t heard – he has. He hears everything and remembers it instantly, it’s just that sometimes he forgets that not all languages are spoken from the brain and he has to remember that he also has a heart. “We just... don’t?”

Neil shrugs again, careless and infuriating, and rubs the back of his neck. “I mean… yeah?”

Andrew can’t even quantify what he hates most right now, the loss of control or maybe the finally getting it back, or maybe just Neil. All he knows is that he’s getting exactly what he’s wanted and he’s so angry about it that he might punch someone, but instead he just snarls his rage – it sounds a little bit more like a squeak. “Yeah?”

Whoever Neil is when he is not on the court or treating the world like he still is is _still_ just enough of an asshole to smile at the way Andrew is rapidly losing his sanity in his kitchen. “I mean, are you worried about Mr. Tran’s money? Fuck Mr. Tran.” Just enough of an asshole to smile, but just polite enough to ignore the way Andrew is slowly coming undone. “You realize that Kevin and I are like, _really_ famous, right? We can easily pay off Aaron and Katelyn’s loans.”

He’s decided. The thing he hates most is that his entire body feels loose and soft and weak and _warm_ , like he hasn’t just crossed the city in near freezing temperatures, and like he shouldn’t feel comfortable here but he _does_. “Renee calls me Rob because it’s short for Roberts,” he finally offers a piece of himself. “As in ‘goodnight, sleep well, I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.’”

The man that used to be Nathanial Wesninski and is sometimes Neil Josten and is currently the thing that Andrew hates most on the entire planet nods sagely. “No one would be afraid of the Dread Pirate Andrew.”

He punches him. Gently. “ _God_ , you are _so_ fucking **_annoying_**.”

* * *

(On the fifth of November, Andrew allows Neil to press their shoulders together on the cold of the fire escape while they watch the remains of Mr. Tran’s will burn to ash in a trashcan.)


End file.
